Contemporary, portrait, landscape, painting, best, top ten, paintings, oil, artist, artists, gallery, life, figure, graphite, sketch, Snowdonia, drawings, pencil, Art, geometry, composition, Master, Masterpiece, Welsh, Wales.
Contemporary, portrait, landscape, painting, best, top ten, paintings, oil, artist, artists, gallery, life, figure, graphite, sketch, Snowdonia, drawings, pencil, Art, geometry, composition, Master, Masterpiece, Welsh, Wales.
La Pietà (detail)
Michelangelo Buonarroti, St.Peters Basilica, Vatican City
You may well ask, - why choose this sculpture as one of the best works of art ever made? And the only answer I have, is...........well....., just take a look at it!
The image above is a detail, and the whole sculpture is here....,
La Pieta is the first of a few pieces on the same theme that Michelangelo created. He made it as a commissioned work for Jean de Bilhères, a French Cardinal who was a representative in Rome. It is made, in Carrara marble, for the cardinal's funeral monument, and was moved into the basilica in the 18th century.
It shows the body of Jesus Christ on the lap of his mother after the Crucifixion. The interpretation is unprecedented in Italian sculpture, although the theme was popular in France at that time.
It is often said that it combines classical ideal beauty with the new naturalism that emerged during the Renaissance.
I remember that this is the only piece of sculpture made by Michelangelo that he actually signed. To me, this is quite significant. It implies that all the other beyond-wonderful works that he made, still did not meet his truly exacting standards. And it also implies that (unlike other artists who scrawl their signatures in too-large letters on their works) however great he was, these same high standards compelled him towards retaining a sense of modesty. Or perhaps, he simply thought that any spectator would recognise his 'signature' embedded in the quality of the works themselves.
The 'naturalism' of the Renaissance is only taken so far however, and Michelangelo uses what is usually called 'artistic licence' to create the message that he aimed for. For example the size of the two figures are manipulated to cope with the difficulty of depicting a fully grown 33 years old man on the lap of his mother. Also, Mary is depicted as a young woman, rather that a mature woman of 50+.
I realise that in these days of downgraded making-skills, it is still terribly uncool to admire the workmanship and technical mastery in a work of art. But I nevertheless confess to being amazed at the thought that a person could begin with a massive block of marble, and then over a period of two years, chip away at it, and arrive at this powerful yet subtle carving. It is an achievement which is stunning. It's one of the few works of art (along with my previous choice, the River God by Phidias) that makes one wonder, how can anybody produce such an amazing thing?
Incidentally, harking back to a previous post (on damage inflicted for various reasons on artworks), it's worth noting that this work has also suffered damages.
The most substantial damage occurred on May 21, 1972, (Pentecost Sunday) when a mentally disturbed geologist, the Hungarian-born Australian Laszlo Toth walked into the chapel and attacked the sculpture with a geologist's hammer while shouting "I am Jesus Christ; I have risen from the dead!" With fifteen blows he removed Mary's arm at the elbow, knocked off a chunk of her nose, and chipped one of her eyelids. Onlookers took many of the pieces of marble that flew off. Later, some pieces were returned, but many were not, including Mary's nose, which had to be reconstructed from a block cut out of her back.
La Pietà (detail)
Michelangelo Buonarroti, St.Peters Basilica, Vatican City
You may well ask, - why choose this sculpture as one of the best works of art ever made? And the only answer I have, is...........well....., just take a look at it!
The image above is a detail, and the whole sculpture is here....,
The image above is a detail, and the whole sculpture is here....,
La Pieta is the first of a few pieces on the same theme that Michelangelo created. He made it as a commissioned work for Jean de Bilhères, a French Cardinal who was a representative in Rome. It is made, in Carrara marble, for the cardinal's funeral monument, and was moved into the basilica in the 18th century.
It shows the body of Jesus Christ on the lap of his mother after the Crucifixion. The interpretation is unprecedented in Italian sculpture, although the theme was popular in France at that time.
It is often said that it combines classical ideal beauty with the new naturalism that emerged during the Renaissance.
I remember that this is the only piece of sculpture made by Michelangelo that he actually signed. To me, this is quite significant. It implies that all the other beyond-wonderful works that he made, still did not meet his truly exacting standards. And it also implies that (unlike other artists who scrawl their signatures in too-large letters on their works) however great he was, these same high standards compelled him towards retaining a sense of modesty. Or perhaps, he simply thought that any spectator would recognise his 'signature' embedded in the quality of the works themselves.
The 'naturalism' of the Renaissance is only taken so far however, and Michelangelo uses what is usually called 'artistic licence' to create the message that he aimed for. For example the size of the two figures are manipulated to cope with the difficulty of depicting a fully grown 33 years old man on the lap of his mother. Also, Mary is depicted as a young woman, rather that a mature woman of 50+.
I realise that in these days of downgraded making-skills, it is still terribly uncool to admire the workmanship and technical mastery in a work of art. But I nevertheless confess to being amazed at the thought that a person could begin with a massive block of marble, and then over a period of two years, chip away at it, and arrive at this powerful yet subtle carving. It is an achievement which is stunning. It's one of the few works of art (along with my previous choice, the River God by Phidias) that makes one wonder, how can anybody produce such an amazing thing?
Incidentally, harking back to a previous post (on damage inflicted for various reasons on artworks), it's worth noting that this work has also suffered damages.
Ouch!
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details............” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
Any idea where we find this jug, and who painted it?
(The answer will be in the next posting.)
And here's the answer from the last posting -
by Paul Klee, 1922.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details............” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
"Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed."
Frank Lloyd Wright
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. . . . and now, a Recommended Read . . .
God's Chinese Son
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan
Jonathan D. Spence
When I first read this book I was embarrassed to realise how little I know of Chinese history, and also how western-centric is our education in this country. This story is on a par, certainly in terms of destruction and possibly in significance, as the two world wars. Twenty million (some accounts specify up to thirty million) dead; and I confess that before I came across this book in Foyles, I had never even heard of the Taiping Rebellion. The story is so fantastic, one would be forgiven for assuming that it is fiction. But it isn't. It all happened. The aim of the rebellion was to overturn the rule of the Manchu's in China and replace it with the Heavenly Kingdom, fronted by the Son of God, no less, the brother of Jesus Christ!
(One can certainly understand, if not condone, the Chinese Communist oligarchy's modern sensitivities about emerging religious groupings).
Fascinating.
Whether read for its powerful account of the largest uprising in human history, or for its foreshadowing of the terrible convulsions suffered by twentieth-century China, or for the narrative power of a great historian at his best, God's Chinese Son must be read. At the center of this history of China's Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuquan, a failed student of Confucian doctrine who ascends to heaven in a dream and meets his heavenly family: God, Mary, and his older brother, Jesus. He returns to earth charged to eradicate the "demon-devils," the alien Manchu rulers of China. His success carries him and his followers to the heavenly capital at Nanjing, where they rule a large part of south China for more than a decade. Their decline and fall, wrought by internal division and the unrelenting military pressures of the Manchus and the Western powers, carry them to a hell on earth. Twenty million Chinese are left dead. Amazon Review
Published on W.W.Norton & Company
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